My dad didn’t like squash. I don’t know why Mom continued to cook it. I learned to love it, but he never did. Once, when I was a young adult, I invited them to my house for dinner and made acorn squash that he really loved. I didn’t use a recipe. I just added a twist. I made it with the butter and brown sugar from my childhood memories, but I added rum. Yum.
I like every kind of squash. Spring, summer, fall. Fall and winter squash is my favorite, though. Acorn. Butternut. Delicata. Cushaw. Spaghetti. Add nuts, cranberries, chicken, turkey, any kind of meat or tofu, any kind of spice. Make it Italian, Mexican, Thai, American of every ethnic variety.
Simple Recipes
Here are some simple recipes that would please any crowd of which I’m a part. J
- Brown butter butternut squash
- Butternut squash risotto
- Roasted butternut squash soup
- Chicken-bacon ranch spaghetti squash boats
- Crispy butternut squash spinach salad with bacon-shallot vinaigrette
- Burrito butternut squash boats
- Lasagna spaghetti squash boats
- Black bean and butternut squash enchilada casserole
- Curried squash pancakes with arugula and apple salad
- Roasted acorn squash with maple-bacon drizzle
Recipes With A Little More Pizzazz
These have just a few more steps in your kitchen, but they’re still simple and outstanding.
- Brown sugar delicata squash
- Winter squash, pomegranate and goat cheese spinach salad with red wine vinaigrette
- Slow cooker Thai winter squash soup
- Roasted chicken and winter squash
- Maple roasted winter squash
- Winter squash soup
- Bacon, spaghetti squash and parmesan fritters
- Apple-stuffed acorn squash
- Cheesy chicken and broccoli stuffed spaghetti squash
Other Sources
There are just no bad ways to cook squash. You can open thousands of cookbooks from local to international. In a Star City United Methodist Church cookbook, I found squash and apple bake (with butternut squash). In a James Beard book, I found buttercup squash spoonbread. From a book of Chilean recipes, I found Porotos Granados, made with any winter squash or pumpkin. (It sounds great.) From the New Doubleday Cookbook – kind of the Bible of US cooks – I found dozens of recipes for winter squash: acorn, buttercup, butternut, golden nugget, hubbard and spaghetti. Baked, mashed, steamed, parboiled, stuffed, scalloped. In souffles, soups, salads and fritters. In a Feng Shui cookbook, I found a recipe for steamed cod with bok choy and butternut squash coulis.
In this day and age, I would be remiss in not sharing another website. You need to sign in (it’s free) to yummly.com, but search for fall squash or winter squash and you’ll come up with a basketful of wonderful recipes.
This is an edit one year later (09/24/2020). I was alerted to another website: 27 Of The Best Winter Squash Recipes You Can Find. Give it a look!